Loves Me, Loves Me Knot (29 page)

And then there had been the craft shows, which were held in giant fair auxiliary buildings or outdoors on the huge fairgrounds themselves. They’d bustled with crowds and been filled with vendors hawking every kind of craft and handmade item imaginable, and Charlotte had done a good bit of business for herself and others whose pieces she’d taken along to sell.

But the shows hadn’t been nearly as exciting as the freedom of the road, moving from place to place, and feeling the wind blow through her hair as she raced along the interstates. With the possible exception of
missing her babies and the Knit Wit meetings, she almost couldn’t wait until next year to get back out there and do it all over again.

Although . . . come to think of it, she might have to consider either a new hairstyle or a hat of some sort. Maybe a helmet or set of scarves in different colors and prints. Because that wind blowing through the open windows of the wagon had really played havoc with her beautiful, bright red upsweep. If she hadn’t used so much hairspray to keep it in place, and then to work it back into place each time she stopped to tinkle, she would have looked positively frightful at the end of every day.

It wasn’t until she’d finished regaling everyone in the circle with stories of her adventures of the last two weeks that she realized Jenna had been unusually quiet. Well, not unusually quiet for sad, divorced Jenna, but unusually quiet for ecstatically happy, newly infatuated Jenna.

“So how did things go for you out at the farm, dear?” she fished. “Was everything all right?”

Did a gorgeous hunk of man get lost on that dusty old road and stumble to the door to ask for directions? Did you invite him in for a sip of tea to quench his mighty thirst and end up offering yourself on a silver platter, as well?

Her niece offered a friendly smile, but anyone with eyes could see it was forced.

“Everything was fine,” Jenna assured her. “I took very good care of your babies.”

“I could see that,” Charlotte said with a nod. “I stopped by to check on them before coming here, and they looked wonderful. Thank you again for staying there with them these last two weeks.”

The group lapsed into silence and Charlotte’s dark eyebrows—which clashed drastically with her carrot-red hair—came together in a frown as she studied her niece even more closely. The lackluster expression, the slow, methodical motion of her hands as she knit at about one-quarter her usual speed.

Jenna certainly didn’t
look
like she’d been bitten by the love bug recently. A flu bug, maybe. The bumblebee of depression, possibly. But nothing close to a love bug.

Could it be that the yarn hadn’t worked its magic this time around?

No. Charlotte wouldn’t believe that. It had done such a marvelous job with Ronnie and Dylan—two people who’d barely been able to stand the sight of each other in the beginning—that she simply couldn’t believe it wouldn’t also work wonders for Jenna. Jenna, who was open and looking for love.

It felt like there were ants in Charlotte’s pants as she tried to remain still in her seat and
not
ask what the Jolly Green Giant had gone wrong. Hadn’t Jenna used the soft purple yarn she’d given her? Was that the problem?

Charlotte wasn’t at all certain what the qualifications and nuances of the magical spinning wheel were, so it was entirely possible that simply
possessing
or touching the yarn wasn’t enough to invoke its powers. Maybe one had to actually use it to create something before those powers were released. Maybe—as had been the case with Ronnie and Dylan—
both
parties had to touch and use it for the enchantment to work.

Lordy, Lordy, if that was the case, then they were in trouble, indeed. How many times could she count on
Fate bringing a man and woman together long enough to knit with a magic skein of yarn?

The fact that Ronnie and Dylan had done just that was a miracle in itself, and something Charlotte didn’t think she could either count on happening again, ever in this lifetime, or manipulate into taking place.

Her heart gave a little lurch in her chest as another horrible thought struck. What if she’d done something wrong? What if she’d used the wrong type of fibers this time, or hadn’t spun them quite right?

What if the beautiful, solid-oak spinning wheel that had been handed down through generations of women in her family and was reputed to be enchanted with the ability to create true love was nothing of the sort? What if it was just a solid-oak spinning wheel, meant to spin new yarn out of fibers, and nothing more?

A chill swept Charlotte from the top of her Lucille Ball head to the corn pads stuck to her toes. She’d been so sure the wheel was infused with magic. So sure she could help to bring about true love matches through a hobby she already adored.

But if the wheel was just a wheel, then that meant Veronica and Dylan working out their differences and falling for one another was nothing more than a fluke. A natural human occurrence.

How dreadfully boring and mundane.

It also meant that Charlotte had no hope of drawing Jenna out of her self-imposed shell and helping her to fall in love again.

Sigh
. Perhaps she was giving up too soon. Thinking the worst before she had definitive proof that the yarn from the enchanted spinning wheel had failed. She needed details, doggone it, so she could get a better
handle on what was going on and whether her machinations had made at least a small dent in her niece’s love life—or lack thereof—or not.

Unable to stand the ominous silence a second more, she piped up and directed a pointed question in Jenna’s direction. “Did you keep busy while I was away? I hope you weren’t bored out there all by yourself.”

Grace snorted, quickly lifting a hand to cover the rest of her laugh. Something was definitely going on here, Charlotte thought, narrowing her heavily lined eyes in suspicion.

“Actually, Charlotte,” Ronnie offered, casting a chastising glance at her blond friend, “a lot has happened since you took off.”

“Oh?” Charlotte asked, scooching forward in her seat a fraction, trying not to appear overly curious. “Like what?”

“Like discovering Zachary Hoolihan is a cheating dickwad SOB whose ass had to be kicked to the curb,” Grace grumbled.

“Oh, my.” Charlotte’s eyes widened and her cheeks heated at the ferocity of Grace’s statement.

Playing the part of levelheaded narrator, Ronnie quickly filled her in on Grace’s discovery of her fiancé—
ex
-fiancé now, it seemed—in bed with another woman while on the road for a charity event with some of the other players from the Rockets team.

Grace scathingly referred to the other woman as a “puck bunny.” For a moment, though, Charlotte considered asking her physician to fit her with a hearing aid because she thought Grace had said something very different. Something that started with a letter that came
much earlier in the alphabet and wasn’t any official hockey term that she’d ever heard.

“That’s terrible,” Charlotte offered. “I’m so sorry, dear.”

Grace inclined her head and kept her mouth in a tight line, putting on a good show of remaining unmoved. But Charlotte didn’t miss the telltale glimmer that filled her prettily madeup eyes. When she thought no one was looking, she sniffed, then wiped a finger beneath her lashes to remove any hint of moisture.

Poor Grace, Charlotte thought, her heart tugging in sympathy. She’d been so happy, so deliriously happy with that young man and all her elaborate wedding plans.

She’d even started knitting her own wedding gown, which Charlotte had been thrilled about. Not many young people would be willing to put the time and effort into such complicated projects, and she’d been eager to see the final results.

The miniscule needles and thin, white yarn were conspicuously absent at this evening’s meeting, Charlotte suddenly noticed. And no wonder. If Grace’s intended had stepped out on her, she wouldn’t have continued working on any part of the wedding plans, either.

Through all of this, Jenna had once again remained ominously silent, keeping her gaze locked on the long aqua-blue boa she was knitting.
Aqua blue
, not purple. Not the yarn Charlotte had given her before she’d gone wheels up and taken off for adventure in the great beyond.

“And what about you, Jenna, dear?” she asked pointedly. Come Hell or high water, she
would
find out what
had happened with her niece while she was gone. And where in St. Petersburg the enchanted yarn had gone!

In response to Charlotte’s question, Jenna blanched, Grace chuckled, and Ronnie’s mouth twisted to one side.

Hmm
. Things just kept getting curiouser and curiouser.

“Our little Jenna had herself a booty call while you were away, Aunt Charlotte,” Grace provided, her tone laced with glee.

Charlotte raised a brow as the color rushed back into her niece’s face. She wasn’t entirely clear on what a booty call was, but thought Grace’s intonation and Jenna’s accompanying embarrassment were pretty good indications that it was something naughty.

Continuing to act as diplomatic moderator for their little triumvirate, Ronnie calmly supplied, “Jenna and Gage spent a bit of time together while you were away.”

“Oh, my goodness,” Charlotte exclaimed. She certainly hadn’t been expecting to hear anything like
that
.

“At last report, things were still going hot and heavy.” Grace grinned and let go of her knitting long enough to flip a lock of blond hair back over her shoulder. She shot Jenna a lascivious, expectant glance and added, “We haven’t gotten an update for this week yet.”

“Actually,” Jenna said in a tiny, almost voice, keeping her gaze glued to her needles, “he left, and he won’t be coming back.”

Everyone in the circle heard the pain in Jenna’s voice, noticed the white-knuckled grip she had on her knitting and that she’d stopped stitching altogether.

“Oh, honey.” Dropping her own knitting, Grace
dragged her chair closer to Jenna’s side and took her hands. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t know. And here I was being such a smart-ass.”

“It’s okay,” Jenna murmured, although her watery voice and wavering words clearly revealed the claim to be a lie. “It was just sex, and we both knew it wasn’t leading anywhere. It had to end sometime.”

Ronnie, who had leaned in close to Jenna’s other side and was rubbing comforting circles in the center of her back, whispered, “But you didn’t want it to, did you?”

Jenna took a deep, shuddering breath. “It doesn’t matter.” Straightening slightly, she shook her head, sending her short, black hair fluttering. “Things were never going to work out. Not while we were married, and not now.”

She lifted her gaze, which was wet with tears. “He’s never going to change his mind. I don’t think I ever really believed that before, but I do now.”

“What did he say?” Grace wanted to know.

Jenna shook her head again and gave her two closest friends a meaningful glance that clearly said she’d share the details with them later, but wasn’t ready to bare her soul just yet, in front of everyone. “Suffice to say I got the point this time. Loud and clear.”

Inhaling dramatically, Grace wrapped her arm around Jenna’s shoulders and squeezed her close. “We make quite the pair, don’t we? Obviously we are not cut out to be involved with the males of our species. I say we swear off the opposite sex altogether,” she announced with feeling. “We should start a ‘Men are Scum’ Club, where we sit around drinking girlie cocktails and discussing why testosterone is the curse of humanity and anyone
with a Y-chromosome should be dragged into the street and shot.”

At first, Charlotte didn’t think Grace’s good-natured teasing would have the desired effect. Jenna looked entirely too miserable to find anything amusing at this point.

But after a few minutes, she sniffed, wiped at her cheeks with the back of her hand, then raised her head to face Grace. “Can I be the president?”

Grace chuckled and hugged her again. “Absolutely. I’ll be your vice president, and we’ll have signs and buttons made up to promote the group. Our logo will be a twig and two berries with a big red line through them. No dicks allowed.”

Laughter went around the circle, breaking the veil of tension that had fallen over the group. Slowly but surely, the women returned to their knitting, filling the area once again with the
clickety-clack
of needles on needles.

Grace and Ronnie, too, leaned back in their seats and picked up their respective projects.

“I think you’re just looking for another excuse to toss back pretty-colored drinks,” Ronnie shot in Grace’s direction.

“Like I need an excuse,” Grace retorted. Then, in a stage whisper aside to Jenna, she said, “Don’t listen to her. She’s been consorting with the enemy and is just jealous she hasn’t had an epiphany about what assholes they are like the rest of us enlightened ones.”

Ronnie raised a skeptical brow. “Until recently,
you
were ‘consorting’ with the enemy, too. More often than I do, I’d venture to guess.”

Grace rolled her eyes and leaned forward to stick
her tongue out at Ronnie around Jenna, who sat between them. “But I have since seen the error of my ways,” she proclaimed in a very put-upon tone. “That’s why they call it an epiphany and why I’m
enlightened
, thankyou-verymuch.”

From there, the conversation broke down into dirty jokes and the denigration of men, with Zack Hoolihan and Gage Marshall getting the brunt of the women’s disgruntlement.

Charlotte was barely listening to any of that, though. She was much too wrapped up in worries over why the enchanted yarn hadn’t worked.

It had apparently gotten Jenna and Gage back together for a short while—which certainly hadn’t been her intention. She’d wanted Jenna to find a new man, not go back to the same one who’d already broken her heart once before. (Even if Gage was a nice enough young fellow otherwise.)

But if the yarn had gotten them back together, then it was supposed to
keep
them together. The spinning wheel was said to create yarn that brought true love, not temporary lust with a misery chaser.